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Ducks with Young Peas

A stew of roasted duck pieces and young peas cooked in cream and finished with an egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,065 recipes. Both carry 2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ducks with Young Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Cut the roasted ducks into pieces, leaving the backbone intact.

  2. Combine the duck pieces and young peas in a stewpan.

  3. Add the cream and cook until heated through.

Finish and serve

  1. Whisk the egg yolks and additional cream together in a bowl.

  2. Stir the egg mixture into the stewpan and mix well.

  3. Serve in a tureen or dish, garnished with a border of pastry.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Peas + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Peas + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Roasted ducks
Provide the main meat, which is already cooked and needs only to be heated through.
Young peas
Add sweetness and a tender, fresh texture to the stew.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the stew a smooth, full body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream-based liquid into a silky sauce when gently heated.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if the stew is too hot. Keep the heat low and stir steadily so the sauce becomes smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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